I can't do baby and toddler groups any more!! Will this have a negative impact on ds??

[tinky19]

Hi,
Well thats it really. I've tried all sorts. Play groups to music 'lessons' but ds (2yrs) just wants to do his own thing. We don't have any friends with children his age so i have tried to keep going but i just hate them. No body talks to me. I spend the entire time racing round after ds and carrying dd(6mo)round.

DH and inlaws think i should coninue for ds sake,

What do you think?

I am so incredibly lucky with my local group I think. I'm surprised how many people hate them. One group I go to twice a week is full of lovely women and we spend the whole time chatting and laughing, it's brilliant. There are a couple of unruly kids but for the most part the mums are really on the ball and are not afraid to tell their children off. We also have a tacit understanding that we can (mildly) tell each others' children off or move them away if they're getting into bother.

I think I must be pretty lucky too. I enjoy toddler groups !! It's nice to have a chat with some other mums and on the whole everybody is really friendly and the groups are well organised.

But however, your DS won't be missing out if you don't go. Have you thought of taking him to music classes like Jo Jingles?

(as long as you don't have plastic toys!) and you won't harm his development by one iota

It always amuses me when people get so precious about toys and look at them from an adult, aesthetic,point of view. All the DC cares about is the play value.

At least some of them will be quite nice if you get to know them. I hope that you realise that they are looking at you and coming to exactly the same conclusions!

Apparently plastic toys stop your nerves from working exotic. I thought I'd heard all the hairbrained theories possible until I read Zuleika's post

I have heard all the hairbrained theories before on toys from natural materials. The worst was then someone who thought that children had grown out of toys by 8yrs-which of course they would if they are not allowed plastic.
I can't see any point in getting all precious-children soon find out if they like it or not. Mine were quite happy playing with clothes pegs, wooden and plastic, rolls of cardboard, saucepans, wooden spoons etc. They also had hours of fun out of a rather lurid orange play kitchen from a car boot sale!
It is so sad when parents won't let it in the house if it doesn't come up to some aesthetic adult standard. We had some absolutely beautiful wooden toys-they were never played with but they looked good!

sorry from and not then

Don't go if it's too stressful for you. My son was a real challenge at toddler group; all he wanted to do was explore and run around. All the other children would be sitting on their mother's knees singing "wheels on the bus" and mine would be scaling bookcases and making forts out of miniature chairs while the leaders gave me dirty looks as I tried to wrestle him away with a newborn clamped to my boob. I stopped going not long after that, despite missing out on seeing my friends (I never really got the opportunity to chat anyway ). I found it was better to put baby in a sling and get the toddler out of the house to wide open spaces, playgrounds, walks in the woods etc. where he could burn off some of that energy. Sometimes we'd invite a friend for a walk or picnic so he got a bit of socialization and he attended pre-school a few mornings a week too. DS is now 7 and just about the most extroverted, sociable, cheerful little fellow ever so I wouldn't fret about the socialization aspect. Go for an easy life .

exotic - if you read my post you'll see that it has absolutely nothing to do with aesthetics.

I hate toddler groups also

We do open spaces outside better. I get fed up when mine are actually both playing nicely then constantly getting squashed/ hit/ toys snatched etc..

Do you have something like nct buggy fit near you. An hours excercise/ fast walk with babies in buggy. Meet a few people then can always see if they would like to join for walk/ swim/ play/ coffee blah blah

Zuleika even if every single toy a child owns is plastic (which would be extremely unusual) the child still touches floors, carpets, doors, walls, paper, spoons, plates, clothes, other people, pets, hair, the inside of their own nose and mouth, chairs, sofas, doors, shoes, grass, concrete, metal slides and swings, climbing frames, trees, flowers, fruit, biscuits, vegetables, meat, and so on. The idea that a child having plastic toys could actually damage their brain development is beyond ludicrous.

I personally think they helped my DC settle into playgroup later on. It also helps them learn sharing etc. We also made lasting friends. I would keep trying to find a good one.

I dare say you think so,Zuleika, but I think it boils down to adult tastes. I love plain wooden toys and hate purple plastic- but when it comes to play value children prefer the plastic. I can list my DCs favourite toys and many were plastic. The wooden Brio train set is the one thing that sticks out for hours of fun.
Give them access to lots of toys and lots of materials and leave it to them.

The idea that a child having plastic toys could actually damage their brain development is beyond ludicrous.

Agreed.

Yes, I found with my kids at that age that their fave toys were always the plastic ones. The cheaper the better. Buy them something tasteful made of wood - not interested.

thank you for your response Zuleika.

I must say with some of the others that I cannot take seriously the thought that plastic toys may actually harm development. It would be a very strange situation where a child was in contact ONLY with plastic toys. I believe the ability to create playthings out of anything is innate in children and offering plastic toys alongside other things is not in any way going to prejudice child development.

The best thing about the toddler groups was the opportunity to play with lots of different toys. They don't make friends at that age but they like watching others. People only talk about their children because it is a starting point-you can lift the conversation onto other things!

I took my first from a baby-it was very boring just having me at home and he loved watching the mobile ones.

I'm afraid to say that I loathed toddler groups! With DD1 I went pretty regularly, mainly because I was lonely and it gave me something to do, but I never actually made any friends through toddler groups, so it didn't help the primary loneliness issue in any event. With DD2 I went very occasionally and she quite enjoyed the classes I suppose, but I didn't. I was much more used to being a mother by then and so generally much happier and less in need of external entertainment. With DS I don't think we ever went to a single toddler class (actually I think a friend dragged me to one once under duress....). DS is now 3 and a half. He started nursery school about 6 weeks ago, settled right in is very sociable and already has lots of little friends - so I don't think no going to groups has had any detrimental effect. In fact I think spending lots of time with me, doing my stuff and not focusing really on him at all except in that he was always with me (be it going to the supermarket, seeing my friends, doing the gardening) has been fantastic for his development and made him a very stable and happy child.

You are of course free to disagree with me about plastic - however I'm a childcare professional and the reason I'm saying this is that I have recently undertaken training about how the objects children work with relate to their development. Especially up to age 1ish because this is the period during which the fingers and eyes start to take over from the highly sensitive mouth as the primary way of experiencing the world. The nerves around the mouth are super-sensitive from birth to encourage breastfeeding (the baby gets a pleasure-response from nursing as well as nourishment) and these nerves are supposed to die away at about 10 months as the fingers take over.

The recent work about how plastic can affect development was expounded by a highly respected, much-published, extremely knowledgeable childcare development expert who is at the top of our field. When children play with too much plastic the fingers fail to take over from the mouth because there is insufficient sensory input. Cailin is correct insofar as there are of course lots of other things that a child touches. But a baby of six months will mostly be touching its toys and it would not be at all unusual for a child to have exclusively plastic toys and to be discouraged from playing with normal everyday objects (nurseries in particular often have few 'real' objects for children to play with). I'm a normal middle class mother who knows other normal middle class mothers and I can tell you that several of them have only plastic toys. And with at least one the 2.5 year old is still putting everything in her mouth, which is a classic sign of still having 'live' nerve endings around the mouth.

I'd love to see a link to that research Zuleika. When I was did my degree in psychology and worked as a developmental psychologist I never came across it and I was working with children with developmental disorders so it would have been very useful to know that their toys were causing brain damage.

Plenty of adults put things in their mouth, by the way, would that suggest that they had plastic toys as babies?

mmm. I am also a childcare professional (teacher) and I still disagree with you.

Do those normal middle class mothers have no cuddly toys? No cars? No sand? No baths for water? No gardens? No clothes? I don't buy it I am afraid.

We didn't buy DD toys (still don't, now we are in the uK family do that), DD's shelf was full of mostly household items but at 2.4 she still puts lots of toys in her mouth. I hear what you're saying zuleika (even though my experience doesn't really tally) but is that necessarily a bad thing? DD was bf for over a year so babies are designed to have nice mouth associations beyond 6 months.

Hmm I love wooden toys as much as the next person and mainly buy ( as I think nicer)

But

As also a childcare professional and psychologist, having studied most studies in depth, I have to say that Iv never heard of this and it sounds a bit made up tbh...

As mentioned above they t senses from all around. Even a baby being cuddled has different clothing materials/ jewellery etc.. To touch. At 6 months most little ones aren't that interested in many toys anyway regardless of texture. A few months later yes but they are also crawling etc..

They will be fine!

As a childcare professional I agree with forevergreek and HumphreyCobbler.
I really can't believe that anyone has just plastic toys or that babies only touch toys. A bunch of keys is just as fascinating at that age. My HV pointed out that it was silly got me to sterilise spoons etc at 6 months because the DC was crawling around and putting all sorts of things in his mouth!
They will be much better with free range at a toddler group and working out which have the most play value.